STORIES

New Awards Recognize Teaching Excellence

Inspired by celebrated HBS professor emeritus Charlie Williams, Paul Judy (MBA ’57) marked his 50th Reunion last year by establishing the Charles M. Williams Awards to recognize outstanding teaching and contributions to the student learning experience at the School. The first recipients are

Lecturer and Senior Researcher Stacey Childress for her Entrepreneurship in Education Reform course

Senior Lecturer Stephen Kaufman for his Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise course

Professor Rakesh Khurana for his Management and Markets course

Professor Das Narayandas for his work in the Program for Leadership Development

Judy worked as Williams’s research and case-writing assistant after graduating from HBS as a Baker Scholar in 1957. He went on to a successful investment-banking career with Chicago-based A.G. Becker & Co. and served on a number of for-profit and nonprofit boards. After retiring in 1981, Judy returned to the School to serve as a senior research associate. He also founded the Symphony Orchestra Institute and its successor, the Orchestra Musician Forum, at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester.

Williams (MBA ’39, DCS ’52) was accepted at HBS at age 19. In his nearly forty-year career, he became one of the School’s most celebrated case-method teachers. Williams is the author or coauthor of hundreds of cases and wrote the seminal textbook, Basic Business Finance, with HBS professors Pearson Hunt and Gordon Donaldson.

“It was a special joy to establish the Williams Awards in honor of Charlie,” says Judy. “He was a great teacher and personal mentor, not only in the classroom but also in case writing. It is a further pleasure to recognize faculty members playing very similar roles in the lives of today’s students. Each initial award recipient is an outstanding teacher and mentor.”